The Non-Existent Anti-Immigrant Agenda

The Non-Existent Anti-Immigrant Agenda: I felt a need to respond to Cathy Young latest snide editorial in Reason in which she makes the claim that Conservatives have an “anti-immigrant agenda”.

To begin with, there is no, “anti-immigrant agenda.” Conservatives simply think there should be some standards applied to immigration whereas far too many liberals and Libertarians are willing to ignore the law and don’t want to even apply the most basic common sense to how we handle immigration. Let me go into a little more detail about what I mean….

An American citizen is an American citizen whether their ancestors came over on the Mayflower or whether they moved here and just became citizens five minutes ago. That’s not in dispute.

Where we first start to see a difference between Young’s position and the position of many Conservatives is on legal visitors to our country. Visiting the United States is not a right, it’s a privilege. As far as I’m concerned, visitors who aren’t willing to follow the rules we set down aren’t welcome here. That means they need to tell the truth about why they’re here, meet all requirements for entry into our country & keep their paperwork up to date. If these simple rules had been followed by the INS, there wouldn’t have been a 9/11 since, “15 of the 19 September 11 terrorists should have been denied visas under the law.” Furthermore, I see no problem with giving extra scrutiny to people, “from countries with special links to terrorism ” which even Young herself seems to largely support.

Where we Conservatives really split from the position Kathy Young advocates is on illegal immigration. Illegal aliens are a major problem in this country for a variety of reasons. They commit crimes (John Malvo being one prominent example that Young pooh-poohs), they fill up our prisons, they add a burden to our health care system and schools, they flout the law to get here, and they don’t pay their fair share of taxes. Encouraging more illegal aliens to come here via amnesty programs and trying to make illegal aliens “more at home here” is counterproductive, it undermines the rule of law, and it hurts our country.

Let me sum things up by laying out our choices on immigration policy…

1) Open Borders, Anyone Can Come Into America: This would be insane. The United States would be flooded with tens of millions of people pouring into our country along with drugs, unlimited numbers of terrorists, etc, etc. This is totally impractical.

by Sir John Hawkins

John Hawkins's book 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know is filled with lessons that newly minted adults need in order to get the most out of life. Gleaned from a lifetime of trial, error, and writing it down, Hawkins provides advice everyone can benefit from in short, digestible chapters.

2) Closed Borders, No More Immigrants Allowed: This would also be insane. It would cause severe economic damage & our overall population would start to decline. This is also totally impractical.

Now since neither of those options is workable, we should…

3) Allow some immigrants into the US: This means we have to set a certain limit on the number of immigrants who can come into the United States and/or become citizens.

If that is our policy, we have two choices…

1) The Cathy Young Policy: Create immigration laws based around what we determine is best for America and then allow people to break them with minimal or no consequences.

2) The Conservative Policy: Create immigration laws based around what we determine is best for America and then strictly enforce them.

If the Cathy Youngs of the world don’t like our immigration policy, then they should try to convince our government to change them. But, to get into a huff and complain about the “anti-immigrant agenda” Conservatives have because we favor enforcing the law is juvenile, illogical, and unfortunately far too common of a position. It’s about time that more people made that clear and stood up for actually enforcing our immigration laws.